Penelope, a Software Tester was really disheartened. A bug had been discovered and she felt that she could have found it. Since she was on the project by herself, she holds herself to blame, rather than sharing blame in the team.
Penelope said that she had raised the concern that she was the only tester on a 6-month project but it was ignored by management.
I said that if she wanted to take annual leave during that time, then the team would be impacted. She said that actually happened and the release was delayed by 1 month. Management have to take part of the blame here.
I also said that even though she is the only tester, the Developers do need to share accountability too because they are all working towards the goal of quality and can’t just rely on the Tester.
I did question if anyone was actually blaming her anyway, or if it was the case of Penelope blaming herself which it did seem to be. I did understand how she could feel like she could have done more, but that negative outlook is bad for your mental health.
I stated that she should think of the bugs that she did find. If she found 50 bugs, then what’s the point being down over the 1 bug that was found by users? She has justified her job by finding the other bugs.
I was watching a video recently where former England and Arsenal football goalkeeper David Seaman was recalling the time he conceded a long-range Ronaldinho freekick against Brazil in the 2002 World Cup. He felt he had made a mistake (by being far off his line), and from that very moment was thinking about the backlash and criticism he would then receive from the media and fans – even during the game. He was putting his hopes on the team scoring a couple of goals to redeem him. As he was explaining this story, I wasn’t thinking “yeah that mistake cost us the World Cup”, I was actually thinking “he was such a great keeper, he probably was a major factor in England even getting that far”. A goalkeeper is such an important position, because a mistake often leads to a goal, whereas an outfield player makes a mistake and there’s a few teammates plus the goalkeeper to redeem him.
Really, the mistakes are hopefully rectified before it gets to the last line of defence, i.e. before it reaches the Software Tester/Goalkeeper. If they save the day, then great. If not, then the team has failed. You can’t blame the last line of defence.
As it goes, we could easily blame Paul Scholes, he made no attempt to get the ball and gave Brazil a cheap free-kick. 😁
Stranger Coding Tings 